


hey i just met you (and this is crazy)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, adjusting to modern era, defrosted popsicle steve rogers, learns how to text
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 05:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11224461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: After New York—after he’s signed back up, now he’s back in the fight, now that he’s an Avenger—they take his phone back, swap it for something new. Not secure enough, apparently, not a phone for an active agent. The replacement is a Starkphone, sleek and glossy, more locked down. There are security protocols he has to follow. No public wi-fi. Two-point thumbprint and ID code to unlock the screen. Phone on the table for every meeting, and face-down at all times.He doesn’t bother getting a personal phone. Who would he call?





	hey i just met you (and this is crazy)

The first phone Steve is given comes from SHIELD.

It’s supposedly very simple. _Plain and functional_ , the agent assigned to brief him on acclimatisation to the twenty-first century says. Steve likes her. She’s very kind and very helpful. But—

 _Mi-seon_ , he doesn’t say, _we had a single candlestick telephone for our entire building. On the base we used radio and the Model 302 Western Electric. I don’t know how to use a keypad that’s not a rotary dial_.

“Uh huh,” he says instead, and maybe Agent Kim can see it in his face, because she just tucks her hair behind her ears, takes him patiently through everything he needs to know.

“It’s fine,” she tells him after an hour and a half, waving away his apologies for taking so long to pick it up. “I showed my grandparents how to do this. I mean, uh, that is—”

“Agent Kim,” Steve says. Smiles at her ruefully. “I get it. It’s okay. Your grandparents, huh?”

They’re probably younger than he is. He’s probably younger than Agent Kim.

 

Once he understands how it works, he starts looking things up. Tentative at first—references he doesn’t have the background for, concepts everyone seems to find second-nature except for him—and then, gaining confidence, broadening his search parameters. Trying to understand this new and foreign world.

 _You can buy things online_ , Agent Kim had said, had set him up with an Amazon account funded by SHIELD credit cards, and Steve orders books on politics, history, biographies and textbooks. They help, a little, but there are things he’s not quite comfortable asking, things he doesn’t want to buy _books_ for. He asks the internet, instead. Curled up in bed, late at night in this lonely pre-furnished apartment, and if he’s crying, there’s nobody around to see it.

“How are you finding your adjustment?” the SHIELD therapist asks in his next session. It’s been six weeks since he woke up. Two months since Bucky fell off the train. Nearly seventy years since he learned what it was like to freeze.

“Fine,” Steve says. “It’s fine.”

“You’ve been reading a lot online,” she says, very neutral, and Steve thinks, _wait—_

“It’s useful,” he says evenly. “To catch up on what I’ve missed.”

She nods. Jots something down on her tablet. “That’s understandable,” she says. “Your search history shows an interest in some specific areas. Defense of Marriage Act. Anti-discrimination legislation. Stonewall.”

“I was curious,” Steve tells her, meeting her gaze. He’s aware, terribly, that he’s flushing red, can’t help it, but he’ll be damned if he lets himself back down. She looks at him, unblinking, for a long moment.

“Just curious?”

“With respect, ma’am,” Steve manages, “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Captain Rogers,” she murmurs, soft. “Steve. You’re aware ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ has been repealed? There’s nothing for you to feel anxious about. I’m not going to push. But I need you to know that I’m here to support your successful transition to the future. If that means— well, if that means there’s anything you need help with, I’m available.”

“I understand,” Steve says. Smiles at her, the careful smile he’d perfected for newsreels and command officers. “Thank you. Really. It was just curiosity. I wanted to know what’d changed, that’s all.”

He understands, he thinks later. He understands more than she intended him to.

He stops using the internet so much after that. Doesn’t seem quite worth it, somehow.

 

After New York—after he’s signed back up, now he’s back in the fight, now that he’s an Avenger—they take his phone back, swap it for something new. Not secure enough, apparently, not a phone for an active agent. The replacement is a Starkphone, sleek and glossy, more locked down. There are security protocols he has to follow. No public wi-fi. Two-point thumbprint and ID code to unlock the screen. Phone on the table for every meeting, and face-down at all times.

“Don’t give out this number to people who haven’t received clearance,” they tell him. “If you want to contact civilians, you’ll need to get yourself a personal phone and calling plan.”

“Sure,” Steve agrees, because it’s easier than arguing. Peggy’s cleared, and Romanoff, the SHIELD STRIKE team. He watches as the tech sets up his profile, adds all the apps he knows he’ll never use. He understands _how_. That’s not the problem anymore, not really. “Just don’t give me a red Starkphone, at least. You’ve got one in silver, right?”

“White gold,” the tech says. “The red’s pretty flashy, huh?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Pretty flashy.” White gold’s pretty flashy too; he doesn’t know what else he expected, getting a phone from Stark. It’s not a big deal, really. He shouldn’t care as much as he does.

He doesn’t bother getting a personal phone. Who would he call?

 

When it comes up again, it’s mostly by chance.

“What are the bubbles made of?” Steve asks, idly curious in the heat of a summer afternoon. They’re drinking mango bubble tea, post-mission; Nat’s got her jumpsuit stripped half-off, the arms tied around her waist. She has sweat shining on her collarbones, smells like gunpowder and hot skin, and Steve is happy in a way that makes him ache. It feels, times like this, that he could exist in this world, that he could live this way for another twenty years and feel almost content.

Natasha shrugs. “Google it,” she says, “that’s what it’s there for. You have a phone, right?”

“They know what I’m searching for,” Steve says, not sure he’s articulating it correctly. “On here, and on my tablet. SHIELD tracks my, uh, my search history.”

Natasha looks at him for a long moment, and Steve shifts uncomfortably. Feels heat rise in his cheeks. “Yeah,” she says eventually. “They do that. You don’t like it?”

“My adjustment therapist brought it up,” Steve says. “A while back, now.” It’s easier to show Natasha than to say it out loud; he brings up the browser, finds some of what he’d been looking at. Natasha looks down at his phone. Back up at him. “I don’t,” Steve says. Swallows once. “I don’t like it. I wish they wouldn’t.” _It feels like I’m being spied on_ , he wants to say, _like I’m nothing but a lab experiment again_. He hasn’t had anyone to tell, until now; he guesses telling Natasha is a start. Like she’s a friend, perhaps. This is what friends might do, right?

“Give it here,” Natasha says. Takes his phone from him, leans in against him as she taps open the settings and performs some complicated function, brow furrowed in concentration. “There,” she says after a minute. “Problem solved. And Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“They’re tapioca. The bubbles.”

“Huh,” Steve says. Pokes at one with his straw, grins sideways at her. “Neat.”

 

Steve knows, objectively, that he’s famous these days. It’s hard not to remember; his face is in the news, on magazines and people’s t-shirts and huge on the sides of buses. People take photographs of him with their phones, surreptitious, when they think he’s not looking.

He likes it better when they come up to him and ask.

“Excuse me,” a girl in her early teens says shyly one afternoon, and Steve looks up from his coffee and sketchbook. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to interrupt, but… I was wondering if it’s okay to take a selfie with you?”

“Of course,” Steve says, “yeah, of course,” and closes his sketchbook, pushes his chair back and stands so she can step in beside him. She barely reaches his shoulder; he has to stoop down so both their faces can fit in the frame. “Oh, use the one with the dog ears, it’s fun,” he says, impulsive, and that makes her and her friends all giggle with delight.

They take photos with the dog ears, wearing stupid glasses, with circlets of flowers crowning their heads. Steve uses his finger to sign his name on one, messy in digital ink, and then beneath it he draws a little star in a circle.

“Like your shield!” one of them says, eyes lighting up, and Steve can’t help it, grabs his sketchbook and draws them in just a few lines, the kind of quick cartoon he’d done for the USO girls in those long hours offstage. The girls are effusive with praise, enough that Steve knows he’s blushing.

“I like your phone,” he says only a little awkwardly, trying to change the subject. He does like her phone. It’s printed with cartoon characters, accentuated with dots of shiny paint. He likes how fun it makes it look. “I didn’t know they came with patterns like that. All of mine have been plain.”

“Oh!” she says. “Not, it’s not— it’s just a case. I bought it at Forever 21. I want a glitter one like Michelle’s, though.”

“Yeah,” Michelle pipes up, holding up her phone and shaking it a little so that the glittery confetti cascades down the case in a slow tumble. Steve feels himself staring. Blinks and looks away.

“Well, it was really neat to meet you all,” he says, smiling carefully. “You take care now.”

 

He doesn’t go to Forever 21, though he’s tempted. He looks it up online instead, browses the range of cases and then remembers other websites exist, searches Google and is immediately overwhelmed with options. They’re all fun; he can’t decide between something printed to look like marble and one with the giant furry thing from the Japanese animated film he’d watched a few nights ago, and in the end he buys them both, impatient for them to arrive.

The marble one shows up first, and he snaps it onto his phone, considers the effect. It’s very subtle, really. Not a statement, nothing anyone would comment on, but he likes the aesthetic regardless. It’s kind of fragile, though. Flimsy plastic, cheap and brittle. Steve’s afraid he might crack it, and it takes him back to learning how to use a phone, realizing he couldn’t keep it in his back pocket, couldn’t grip it too tightly or let it drop. He’d gone through three or four before he caught up with himself, and it’d made him feel out of place in his own body as well as adrift in time.  He likes the other case better: a smooth wooden shell with a dark walnut stain, the design etched into the back panel. It’s not really the kind of thing a SHIELD agent should have on their phone, probably. He likes it a lot.

 

The next briefing, Natasha looks narrowly at his phone, face-down on the conference room table just as it’s supposed to be. She says nothing, but the set of her mouth suggests that Steve should suspect something. He’s not wrong. Natasha shows up a couple days later and slides something across the table to him.

This one is clear and glittery, a Disneyworld castle engraved into the bottom half and filled in with some kind of holographic foil.

“Saw it and thought of you,” Nat says, smirking just a little. Steve looks up at her. Back at the phone case.

“Hey, thanks,” he says, enthusiastic. “I love it, you know what, I’m gonna put it on right now.” He does just that, snaps his wooden case off and the Disney one on. It looks really great against the brushed white gold of his phone, actually. He wasn’t lying when he said he loved it. There’s a long pause.

“Steve,” Nat says, breaking first, and Steve looks up at her, face as earnest as he can make it. “Steve, come on.”

“What?” he asks, very deadpan. “I do, I like it! It was really nice of you!”

“Give me the fucking case,” Natasha says, “oh my god, Rumlow is gonna eat you alive if you show up to a mission debrief with that thing.”

“I’d like to see him try,” Steve shrugs, and Natasha just looks at him for another minute or two before shrugging too, taking his phone so she can tilt it to catch the light.

 

Rumlow does eyeball the phone case, looks at it and then at Steve with his lip curled, and Steve just smiles, quietly stares him down like he’s absolutely daring anyone to say a goddamn word. Nobody does, and Natasha twitches with suppressed laughter. It starts some kind of game; the next briefing, Steve’s got one with mermaid spangles, and the time after that, a rubber case that looks like a carton of French fries. Still, nobody says anything, and then the meeting after that, Tony arrives fifteen minutes late and extremely hungover, complaining loudly about losing his sunglasses, and Nat waits just a minute before she reaches over and carefully shifts Steve’s phone—mirror holographic, with a heart set out in tiny diamantes—into a patch of sunlight so that it reflects straight up into Tony’s face.

“What,” Tony says, with feeling, “the _fuck_ , Rogers.”

“I like it,” Steve shrugs. “It’s fun.”

 

Apparently that gets Tony in on the fun too, because Steve starts receiving online orders every so often, ever more improbable and ridiculous cases that Steve suspects Tony is actually designing and fabricating himself. Natasha keeps it going too, hands something over one morning and when Steve pulls it out of the wrapping, it’s some kind of crochet craft project.

“Did you _make_ this?”

“No,” Nat says, her face daring him to challenge her. Steve looks down at what he’d thought at first was a toy. It’s a crocheted sleeve, like a little cozy, in red and white and blue yarn. It’s unmistakably, recognizably, a Captain America figure. It’s even got the shield and the _A_ on its helmet.

“You did. You made this.”

“Shut up,” Natasha growls. “But put it on your phone, I want to see Tony’s face.”

“This is ridiculous,” Steve sighs, but he tucks his phone into it anyway, sets it down on the table and waits for the reaction.

Natasha makes them for the whole team. They become such a viral hit that Steve counts forty-seven different people carrying them on the subway one morning. Steve will never tell anyone, but he’s a little smug that the Cap version is more popular than Iron Man, and then immediately more smug when Tony’s clearly irritated by it.

At some point, Steve thinks, it’s become some kind of silent protest at all the security requirements. _Keep your phone face-down. Don’t give out your number. No personal contact._ He’s not nothing but a SHIELD agent. Doesn’t know what else he might be.

 

He worries, when he meets Sam, that it might be all Sam sees. Just a soldier who can’t adjust to being back in the world, a cautionary tale behind the shield. And then Natasha texts him, and he pulls out his phone, catches Sam’s amused glance when he sees the dinosaur with googly eyes on the back of the case.

“Natasha,” Steve explains, shrugging, “she likes to mess with it,” and that’s true, it’d been Natasha who’d stuck the eyes on. Sam’s laugh is surprised and loud, and Steve grins, thinks, _god, I want to hear that again._

 

It’s enough that he visits the VA even though his palms sweat and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Feels nervous and dumb for being nervous, all at once, and then, under that—

 _What makes you happy_ , Sam asks, and Steve thinks _sun on my face, and the taste of mangos, and that breathless quiet when we’re at the Mall and it’s like we’re the only people in the world. The morning light when you’re smiling at me._

“I don’t know,” he says out loud, and takes a deep breath. “You could have dinner with me, and I could find out?”

“Oh man,” Sam laughs, looking down and then up at Steve through his lashes. “That’s smooth, Rogers. Dinner, huh? Is that in a professional or personal capacity, ‘cause I don’t offer one-on-one counselling and I don’t do therapy for people I wanna date.”

“Are you saying you want to date me?” Steve asks, heart hammering, and sees the way Sam’s lips quirk at the corners like maybe he’s smiling despite himself.

“I might,” Sam tells him. “Let’s see how it goes.”

How it goes is they eat Ethiopian together, sitting in the corner of the tiny restaurant and Steve letting Sam take point on what to order. When he shows Steve how to mop up lentil stew with the injera, his fingers brush Steve’s, and Steve takes a breath, lets his thigh press warm and deliberate against Sam’s under the table. Sam laughs at him for needing a glass of water; Steve tells him about Natasha’s crochet. Sam’s laugh, again, is so beautiful Steve aches with it.

 

“So,” Sam says after dinner. Looks down, pointedly, at how Steve’s phone has sat face-down on the table all evening. “Can I get your number, or are you gonna ask for mine?”

“How about both?” Steve asks. He still doesn’t have a personal phone, never got around to getting one. In this moment, he doesn’t care.

“Oh,” Sam says, though, like he’s picked up on what’s going on. Smiles, crooked and teasing. Of course he’s noticed, Steve thinks. He’s a damn soldier. Knows a protocol when he sees one. “You’re gonna give me access to your secret agent phone? Isn’t that some kind of security breach?”

“You’re worth breaking protocol for,” Steve tells him, knowing it’s ridiculous. It _is_ ridiculous. “Anyway,” he adds, “I hardly think you’re going to sell my secrets to the highest bidder.”

“I have a very trustworthy face,” Sam agrees. Watches Steve key open his phone, leans in a little closer so he can murmur his number into Steve’s ear. Steve’s pretty sure Sam doesn’t miss the way it makes Steve shiver.

 

They wander back to Sam’s car after that, not quite hand in hand but shoulders bumping as they walk.

“I should go,” Steve says, regretful; it’s only early evening, but he’s been out all day. Feels, maybe, like he needs to go and sit on this for a while before he’ll believe it’s really real. “I had a real great time, though. You should call me.”

“Oh, I should call you, huh? That’s how it is? Oh your secret agent phone?” Sam rolls his eyes, but then he tilts his head, and it’s suddenly all Steve can do to back him up against his car, to bracket him in with a hand on his hip and two fingers against Sam’s jaw.

“I really want to kiss you,” Steve says, honest, and Sam licks his lips, looks up at Steve.

“So kiss me already,” he says, low and hot, and then it’s something else for Steve to add to his list of things that make him happy: _the taste of mangos, and warm morning sunshine, and Sam Wilson’s mouth against mine_.

Steve doesn’t know how long they make out against the car. He only surfaces when his phone beeps. Blinks dazedly down at it.

“If that’s _duty_ calling,” Sam mutters, and Steve laughs softly. Presses his face to the curve of Sam’s neck for just a moment.

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s Natasha asking if I’ve followed through yet,” he admits, and then, over-honest, “she’s kind of my only friend.”

“ _Steve_ ,” Sam says, like he’s endeared by that admission, and Steve kisses him again, smiles against his mouth.

“I better go,” he says. “I, uh. I had a really great time tonight. You should call me. Or I’ll call you.”

“Yeah,” Sam tells him. “Yeah, Steve, you should call me.”

 

Steve never gets the chance.

He shows up on Sam’s doorstep instead, filthy with dust from the rubble, a little blood-stained. Worried about what Sam might say, about dragging him into this mess, but Sam only nods, and then he's offering his help, more than Steve could ever have asked, and it takes his breath away all over again.

“Didn’t know you knew my address,” Sam says in the kitchen after breakfast. Passes Steve a plate to rinse. Steve runs the water over it, carefully loads it into the dishwasher.

“I didn’t,” he says cautiously. “I, uh. Natasha traced your location from your cellphone number. I wouldn’t have— if it wasn’t, you know—”

“Only a little bit creepy,” Sam says lightly. Touches his fingers to the small of Steve’s back. “I’m glad you’re here, Steve.”

“What can I say,” Steve shrugs. “You just have a very trustworthy face.”

“Oh, is that all, huh?”

“You know it’s not,” Steve tells him. Leans down into a kiss, breathlessly thankful that this is still possible at all. “Anyway, I guess I need to get a new phone now. Turns out there were some major security issues.”

“Terrible,” Sam agrees, dry. “Keep the dinosaur case, though. It’s kinda cute.”

“Oh,” Nat interjects, appearing in the doorway, “you have no idea, Wilson,” and that’s how Natasha and Sam spend the entire forty minutes driving into DC talking about Steve’s collection of started-as-an-in-joke novelty phone cases.

“Like you can talk,” Steve mutters, “you crocheted for me,” and Natasha digs her fingers into Steve’s side, goes on telling Sam exactly how much Steve likes the amount of glitter the future holds. They’re going to be a problem. Steve can tell.

 

“Your phone’s ringing,” Sam says much, much later. Steve mumbles something that might be at least half actual words. Presses his face more firmly into Sam’s hip. “Oh, for the love of— hey, Maria. Nah, he’s napping. Can I get him to call you back? Yeah, you too.” Sam ends the call, sets the phone back down. Runs his fingers over the nape of Steve’s neck and up into his hair. “That was a call for you, you jerk. I’m not your secretary.”

“‘m sleeping,” Steve yawns. “Mm, that feels nice, keep doing it. Anyway, it’s not like you don’t know my passcode.”

“Somewhere Tony Stark just spontaneously generated a lecture about Avengers security protocols and he doesn’t know why,” Sam sighs. “Nice wallpaper, by the way. I really think you caught my best angle.”

“You’re beautiful,” Steve murmurs. Nuzzles Sam’s belly, mouths kisses down the dip in the muscle. Sam’s breath hitches, and his fingers tighten in Steve’s hair, though he doesn’t make an effort to pull Steve away; Steve takes the opportunity to hook his fingers into the waistband of Sam’s sweats, pulls them down just a little.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says, sounding breathless. “I got your number, Rogers.”

“You do,” Steve agrees, “I gave it to you, and everything.”

“You know,” Sam tells him, letting out a breathy little moan that gets Steve’s heart beating fast even now, “you never actually did,” and Steve pauses for a moment, grazes his teeth over Sam’s hipbone while he thinks about it.

“Huh, you’re right, I didn’t. Well, you gotta forgive me, I’m just terrible with modern technology.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Sam says, throwing his head back in laughter, and Steve thinks, _god, I am so fucking lucky_.

**Author's Note:**

> so I just got a phone case which is 1) pastel holographic star-shaped glitter gradient, 2) featuring a heart filled with tiny pearls that rattle like a miniature maraca, 3) in a clear plastic base revealing the underlying rose gold pink iphone Aesthetic™
> 
> me: I'm gonna write a funny fluffy thing about Steve using glitter phone cases  
> me: ...in which Steve is achingly lonely and unhappy and isolated
> 
> A N Y W A Y all of these phone cases exist, including the [captain america crochet phone cozy](https://www.etsy.com/nz/listing/163314646/pdf-pattern-captain-america-iphone-5?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=crochet%20captain%20america%20phone&ref=sr_gallery_1)
> 
> I am [on tumblr](http://notcaycepollard.tumblr.com/), come say hi!


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